


Blame it on the Viscum album

by codswallop



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, First Kiss, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Mistletoe, Podfic Available, Poison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock, Christmas, and poisonous plants: what could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame it on the Viscum album

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dorothydonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothydonne/gifts).



> Many thanks to garryowen for beta-reading and to thesmallhobbit for brit-picking.

John assumed at first that Mrs. Hudson was the one who’d put it up. It was the reasonable assumption. He didn’t know whether to put it down to an over-zealous burst of holiday decorating cheer, or if it was intended as an indelicate suggestion. Either way, the only thing to do was clearly to ignore it.

Until the second or third day, when it suddenly dawned on him that Sherlock might think _he_ had hung it there, which would be horrific. 

“I suppose it’d hurt her feelings if we took it down,” John said over his post-breakfast tea the next morning, glancing up pointedly at the little bunch of leaves and berries hanging like an ominous unspoken question in the middle of the doorway between their kitchen and sitting room.

Sherlock looked up from his newspaper with a vague scowl of incomprehension.

“No, the, the, the...up there, Mrs. Hudson’s little...Christmas decoration, I suppose it’s meant to be. Funny old thing, eh?”

Sherlock continued to look nonplussed for a moment. “Oh, you mean the mistletoe! No. No, that’s mine.”

“Yours?” John laughed. “You’re joking. Oh. No, you’re not joking. Er. All right, then.” 

“ _Viscum album,_ ” Sherlock said as he threw down the paper and strode into the kitchen. “ _Herbe de la Croix._ Family _Santalaceae_. A parasitic plant, found in--”

“Yes, none for me, thanks,” John said. “You know how I feel about lectures in botany before nine in the morning.” Sherlock was scowling again, so he added, “Sorry. It’s nice, really. Festive.”

“Poisonous,” Sherlock said, absorbed in tea-making. “Don’t touch it.”

“Oh, yes. I mean...no. Definitely not. Anyway, I’ll be off now,” John said, and left without taking his toast plate to the sink.

*

Anything relating even tangentially to kissing had become Problematic recently. That was the thing. Kissing and Sherlock. Kissing Sherlock. Oh god. Ever since...well, there’d been a day, there’d been a case, actually, which had wrapped up rather spectacularly, two weeks and five days ago. It had begun with anonymous packages containing eviscerated hedgehogs and ended in explosions and gunfire, and Sherlock had been knocked down and stunned by one of the explosions. John was panicking and about to initiate CPR procedures when Sherlock had come round again, pale and gasping and only lightly singed, and John was so relieved that he’d...

They hadn’t mentioned it since. Sherlock probably didn’t even remember it. He’d probably still been mostly unconscious. 

John remembered it. Vividly, in fact.

So the mistletoe now was, what, Sherlock’s idea of a joke? A bit of mockery? Random sentimental whimsy?

A hint?

Surely not a hint. John watched closely, though, to see if Sherlock was to be found lingering in the doorway at any point over the next few days. He wasn’t, and John was very careful not to do so, either. He took to entering the kitchen at a casual sideways angle, in fact, trying to avoid passing directly beneath the decoration. Silly thing. He just didn’t want Sherlock to think that _he_ was thinking...because he wasn’t. Obviously. 

It was a particularly scraggly specimen, John noticed, scrutinising it from the safe distance of his chair the following Sunday afternoon while Sherlock was in the kitchen making tea again. Sherlock certainly hadn’t picked it out for its aesthetic beauty, in any case. (Was Sherlock making excuses to wander into the kitchen more often recently? Surely he didn’t usually make tea for himself so often as he had been this week.) John looked swiftly back at his book when Sherlock came back into the room, hoping he hadn’t been caught staring. 

“Could I have a cup of that, too, while you’re up?” John asked, mostly as a cover for the state of his face.

“No,” Sherlock said, stalking past, covering his mug protectively as though John were about to reach out and take it from him. “Make your own.”

John sighed. There was absolutely nothing seductive in Sherlock’s manner. Not that he cared. “Never mind,” he said, getting up and tossing aside his book. He must have read the page he was on a dozen times, and he still had no idea what it said. “I think I’ll go out for a walk. Get some air.”

“Good,” Sherlock said absently, hunched over his tea. “Yes. Go.”

*

“That’s not,” John said, when he happened to glance up as he walked into the kitchen a few days later. “Wait. Is that a new...?” He tilted his head and frowned.

“Dr. Watson has made an observation,” Sherlock said to his newspaper. “I shall alert the media at once.”

“That’s a different mistletoe branch,” John said, ignoring him. “The old one looked all...but why would you...?” 

“Hmmm. Why _would_ I?” Sherlock asked, looking up at him with a glint of smug challenge.

John, flustered and blushing, wished he’d never brought it up. Sherlock was definitely baiting him now. “No idea,” he said shortly, and went on into the kitchen to make himself lunch. He thought he heard Sherlock mutter “Disappointing,” as he picked up the paper again, but he chose to ignore that as well. 

*

It was only ten days till Christmas, suddenly, and then it was a week, and John hadn’t done anything much about it yet. He’d thought he might pick up a tree, a small one, or at least a wreath, but then it seemed too much bother, and what was the point? If Sherlock had suggested it, or said anything at all about the holidays...but Sherlock was in a mood this month, withdrawn and sullen, forever skulking in his room. 

“Got another case, then?” John made himself ask brightly, on one of the occasions when Sherlock ventured out into the kitchen to put the kettle on again, shuffling and sheet-clad. 

“Mmm,” said Sherlock. He drank down half a glass of water from the tap and ate one biscuit from the open packet on the counter while he waited for the kettle to come to a boil. John waited, too.

“Well?” he prompted at last. “What’s it to do with?”

“Wife poisoned husband,” Sherlock said. “Apparently. Nothing of note. Don’t trouble yourself, Doctor,” he added over his shoulder as he drifted back into his room with his mug.

John went cold and then hot, doused by a wave of hurt feelings. Sherlock was definitely putting him off, then--it hadn’t been just his imagination; this was too pointed to ignore. He’d always told John about his cases before, even the dull ones. Even in the absence of a story to tell, Sherlock was generally only too happy to go on and on about criminals these days and their lack of imagination, or to fret and rant about the necessity of wasting his time on idiots while John made sympathetic noises. 

Was it the kiss? It must have been the kiss. Nothing else had changed. Unless Sherlock had simply got bored of having him there all the time--either way, he was obviously signalling John to back off. It seemed most unfair, when John had all but bent over backward making it clear that he didn’t intend to encroach on Sherlock in any way. Still, if Sherlock wanted more distance, then distance he would get. John went out for another long walk, shutting the front door behind himself with a slam.

When he returned, cold and jostled and thoroughly cranky from fighting his way through holiday crowds, Sherlock’s bedroom door was shut tight, and it remained that way for the next several days, so far as John could tell.

*

It wasn’t until Christmas Eve that John happened to notice the mistletoe again. His eyes fell upon it while he was staring vacantly into space waiting for his toast to brown, and he looked at the little branch in unfocused unhappiness for a full minute without really seeing it at all.

Then he startled. It had changed again. Or rather, it was the same bunch--he’d made particular note of the crookedly tied scarlet ribbon on this one--but it looked much thinner and more lopsided than before, with broken-off leaves and missing clusters of berries.

“What--” John said, and then realised his toast was burning. He unplugged the smoking toaster. There was a bit of leaf on the worktop next to the kettle, he noticed now, and a smashed smear of juice and seeds that might once have been a white berry.

“Sherlock!” He went over and knocked at the closed bedroom door, then pounded, then went ahead and tried the knob when there was no response. It was unlocked. Sherlock was on the bed, pale, curled in on himself, eyes closed, and John’s heart leapt into his mouth, but Sherlock stirred and uncurled a bit and spoke, his voice languid and slurry.

“Yes, John?”

John cleared his throat and leaned in the doorway with his arms folded. He forced his tone of voice down to one of casual levelheaded anger. “Sherlock. Have you been deliberately poisoning yourself with _mistletoe tea_ for the past fortnight?”

Sherlock raised one hand and made an uncoordinated dismissive gesture. “It’s very slow-acting,” he complained. “I’d hardly call it a proper poison at all.”

John shut his eyes and counted ten, then detached himself from the doorway and went over to feel Sherlock’s pulse. “Right. Let me rephrase that. _Why_ have you been deliberately poisoning yourself with mistletoe tea for the past fortnight? You know what, no. Don’t answer that right now. There is no possible answer that won’t make me more inclined to throttle you than I am already. Stomach pains?”

“Horrible,” Sherlock admitted. “No, where are you going, what, why?”

“To see if we still have any activated charcoal left over from that time with the mothballs,” John said grimly. “And you’d better hope we do, because I am not spending Christmas Eve in A&E. I will drop you off at the front door and leave you there, Sherlock, I swear it.”

*

Several hours later, John tucked a very cleaned-out and miserable Sherlock back into his bed and brought him an extra blanket and a cup of proper tea. Sherlock took one look at the mug and shut his eyes, shuddering anew.

“Well, what _did_ you do it for, you idiot?” John was still torn between wanting to shake him to death and longing to curl up beside him on the bed and press his lips to the pulse in Sherlock’s throat, the purpled hollows of his temples, the sweet damp skin behind his ears.

“Case,” Sherlock rasped. “I told you. A woman claimed her husband got poisoned to death accidentally by mistletoe leaves and berries dropping off into his tea over a period of several days. I wanted to replicate the results. Complete fabrication, obviously--took loads of the stuff to make me this ill. I had to pull it off by the handful in the end. There’s no way a fatal amount simply happened to fall into his teacup unnoticed.”

“I see,” said John, who still didn’t, quite. “So...asinine methodology aside, you’ve got your result; do you need to phone the Yard now, or...?”

Sherlock coughed and hemmed. “It wasn’t the Yard’s case,” he said finally. “Or at least, not an open one. I...read about it. Somewhere or other. Don’t remember.”

John waited, eyebrows aloft.

“All right, it was in a true crime magazine from December 1967!” Sherlock snapped. “I wanted to see if it might be plausible. Information about household toxins is never not valuable, John. Anyway, I can’t believe you didn’t notice what I was doing and try and put a stop to it--the evidence was waving right over your nose the entire time. I can’t tell if you’re completely heartless or simply self-absorbed and blind.”

“What, _me_?!” John cried. “Me, heartless? That’s, that’s just--”

“And you didn’t even kiss me again the way you were supposed to!” 

Things got very quiet. 

“I wanted to replicate those results, too,” Sherlock said, and bit his lower lip. The corners of his mouth were still stained faintly black with charcoal.

“Oh, you stupid sod,” John said, and leaned down and kissed him swiftly. Sherlock made a surprised sound in his throat, but when John began to back off, Sherlock’s hand flew to the back of his neck and pulled him close again. Too close; their noses bumped at an awkward angle, and there was a terrible mashing grind of lips against teeth before John was able to extricate himself.

“God, that was awful,” Sherlock said, looking very worried.

“Yes, Christ, absolutely rubbish,” John agreed, and then started to laugh, half in nervous release and half in sheer giddiness. “Right. Delete that, never happened, let’s have another go. We can do better than that--well, I know I can.”

“Can you?” Sherlock still looked endearingly terrified as John lay down next to him on the bed and settled into a better angle of approach. 

“Pretty sure,” John said. He cupped a hand to Sherlock’s jaw, drew in close, brushed his mouth against Sherlock’s lower lip, paused to savour the tingle of anticipation, and then kissed him--softly at first and then thoroughly, until his breath came short and his stomach sparked with a rising glow of dizzy excitement.

“Oh,” Sherlock said, when he broke it off. “Yes, that was definitely a--a marked improvement.”

John tried not to look overly smug.

“I really think we could do better still, though,” Sherlock added, with a sudden predatory gleam, and raised himself up and pinned John down to the bed by his shoulders, paused for effect, then dived onto him hungrily.

*

“You could have tried standing about under it, you know,” John said. “The way normal people do. Or just... _said something_ , even. Why do you have to make everything so difficult?”

“You like difficulties,” Sherlock told him. “Anyway, I didn’t put it in _your_ tea.”

John thought about this.

“I don’t want to know how long it took you to decide not to poison my tea,” he said. “Please don’t tell me. Also, I can’t believe this needs saying, but please don’t experiment on yourself with toxic substances. Ever. Again.”

“That’s a ridiculously unreasonable--no, no, don’t leave, come back, I need you to--yes, all right, John, anything, I won’t.”

“Good,” said John, and kissed him again. “I’m not sure I believe you for one second, but let’s say I do for now.”

“It is Christmas,” Sherlock observed, settling in warmly against John’s body and nestling his head down on John’s chest. They fit together like puzzle pieces, as if they’d been doing this forever; it didn’t feel strange or awkward at all, to John's surprise. “I didn't get you anything,” Sherlock added, yawning, “but I could in the morning, if anywhere’s open. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” John said truthfully, and had to shut his eyes against the sudden rush of too much joy to bear.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Blame it on the Viscum album](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704616) by [consulting_smartass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_smartass/pseuds/consulting_smartass)




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